We signed up for MG&E‘s wind power last month, and so far have not used 577 pounds of coal.

We also got a new air conditioner last week, after the forty-year old Carrier gave up the ghost. They figured the old unit’s SEER value was about three, and the new one is thirteen. It’s also so much nicer / more efficient that it needs to run a lot less, so it’ll be interesting to watch our usage over the summer. Then again, with the way the cost of energy has been going, the bill will probably stay the same even if the use plummets.

Starry Night is now available for your iPhone. This is much handier than those cardboard slidey things, but since it’s a web application and doesn’t actually live on the phone, you’ll still need a network somehow — which means the reallydark sky places are out of reach. Then again, if you’re on that hard-core of a stargazing expedition, you’re probably already at the point of rattling off “GC 19728″ instead of “Alpha Centauri” or “The Bright Shiny Thing Up There; No, Not That One — To Your Left A Bit.”

Eyeglasses Stores are for Suckers: Amen. When I got new glasses this year, it was because my five-year-old frames were getting ugly and boring, not because I couldn’t see. When I got the glasses with the new prescription, everything was so fun-house distorted that I couldn’t wear them even after the “getting used to them” period. Since LensCrafters has a 90-day guarantee, I took them back, someone else wrote me a different scrip, and I waited another two weeks for them to be ready. The new new ones? Still fucked up. Six weeks, four visits, and five hundred dollars later, I had new frames with my five-year-old prescription in them and I can see just fine. They even had the gall to say that when you “get older” you have a lower tolerance for adjusting to new glasses! Now that I’ve got the actual scrip numbers (most places I’ve been to in the past wouldn’t give it to me so that I’d have to return to them for new glasses – even though that’s against the law), when I next need contacts or glasses, I’m hitting the internet.

I made salsa yesterday, and while the jars were sterilizing I got wondering about the history of canning. I hope all those “freedom fries” morons cleaned out their pantries, because the French invented it:

Between growing up in Iowa (and still living in a tornado-tastic area) and having spent EVERY FUCKING CAMPING TRIP EVER cowering in a tent with nobody having adequate weather information (let alone CHECKING the fucking forecast before departure), it’s been really bothering me that we don’t have anything on hand should there be an emergency. We’ve got satellite TV, too, so if there’s something nasty in the area, we don’t get reception at all. Fed up, I ordered (and just got) the coolest emergency radio (almost) ever. DUDE! We’re talking well designed. Check it out:Power supply:
– A/C adapter, OR
– three AA batteries, OR
– the rechargable battery OR
– the hand-crank (which will also charge the rechargeable battery)Reception:
– NOAA Weather Channels
– AM / FM
– Television audio (hugely cool, because they’re the ones that update shit in an emergency)Other goodies:
– CHARGE YOUR CELL PHONE!!! Even if there’s no power you can use the hand crank to charge it – NOICE.
– Flashlight
– Siren
– Alert Mode – leave it on and it only squawks if there’s something coming your way
– Water-resistant

HOLY SHIT IS THAT THE COLLEST EVER?! We’re ordering more — for the car, and for our parents. The only thing I find annoying is that the siren is on the same knob as the power and alert — so you try to turn off the alert mode and you easily end up going EEE AAAAW EEEEE AAAAW at ear-splitting levels. Other than that, and the fact that we have to order a different adapter because our cellphones are Treos, it’s SO worth the money and I will never be a loser cowering in a tent with “experienced campers” again. Rock.

Now consider what’s happened at the subdivision. Once the topsoil is removed, you’re left with the rock and clay underneath, which hasn’t seen the light of day for thousands of years. Landscapers call it “hardpan,” and from an engineering point of view it’s an ideal material to mould into the site’s drainage plan.

Run heavy equipment over material like that, and it quickly gets compacted into something with much the same consistency as concrete.

Once the houses are in place, the topsoil gets put back, but usually to a depth of only 20 cm., which is the typical municipal standard and enough to support healthy turf.

The rest of the stockpiled topsoil is usually sold off and eventually ends up in nurseries, but only after it’s been rehabilitated by adding manure or peat moss or sand. That’s because the soil became anaerobic after sitting in a pile for so long. “There’s no oxygen within that pile anymore, and eventually all the living microbes and organisms in that soil die,” says Ubbens.

So you end up with less-than-ideal topsoil spread thinly over a layer of clay hardpan that often includes pieces of brick and other debris. “In our business, we call it `builder’s loam,'” says Ubbens. “It’s unfortunate that it’s so bad that it’s even got a name.”

Planting trees in that is like sticking them in a clay pot. “We bore a hole in that heavily compacted clay, put the tree in with a certain amount of soil, but the tree will eventually start to decline,” says Andy Kenney, senior lecturer in urban and community forestry at the University of Toronto.

He [Gehrt] found they have a 60 percent annual survival rate — twice that of their rural counterparts… …Their presence can be helpful, though. Gehrt found they’ve reduced a growing population of Canada geese, and said other studies cited coyotes as useful deer and rodent population controllers.

I was just looking at globes — who knew they were so expensive?? Anyway, these two were pretty neat – the laser-cut ocean floor globe and land globe You know what’s weird? LAND MASSES. I mean, what the fuck? This is a bizarre and cool little planet…

The British government is preparing to test new high-tech license plates containing microchips capable of transmitting unique vehicle identification numbers and other data to readers more than 300 feet away.

Officials in the United States say they’ll be closely watching the British trial as they contemplate initiating their own tests of the plates, which incorporate radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags to make vehicles electronically trackable.

They can already get my plate from their eyes, and all those cameras. What the hell do they need $300 plates for that broadcast the number for?